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EDUC 224

Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation

School of Education

Recommended for route(s):

[ Academia ] Health Law: General

Why it is relevant for ...

[ Academia ] as a Relevant Course outside SLS for those interested in Management : Students interested in the healthcare industry should consider taking one or more courses to gain a better understanding of current issues in healthcare management. This course introduces students to the concepts and challenges of applying business skills in the social sector. Social entrepreneurs are increasingly blurring the lines between private initiative and public purpose, using for-profit and hybrid forms of organization to create new and effective solutions to social problems.

General course
Description:

(Same as STRAMGT 367). This course examines individuals and organizations that use entrepreneurial skills and approaches to develop innovative responses to social problems. Entrepreneurship has traditionally been seen as a way of creating wealth for the entrepreneur and for those who back her/his work. Social entrepreneurs employ "entrepreneurial skills," such as finding opportunities, inventing new approaches, securing and focusing resources and managing risk, in the service of creating a social value. As the intensity and complexity of social and environmental problems has grown in recent years social entrepreneurship, defined as innovative, social value creating activity that can occur within or across the nonprofit, government or business sectors, has become increasingly prominent. While virtually all enterprises, commercial and social, generate social value, fundamental to this definition is that the primary focus of social entrepreneurship is to achieve social impact above all else. We will study some of the most promising and the best-proven innovations for improving people's lives. We will also examine mature projects that are now tackling the issue of "scale", moving from local innovations to solutions that create deep systemic changes for larger numbers of economically disadvantaged individuals and communities throughout the world. This year we will focus on what are the constraints and opportunities for creating a social enterprise at scale. The process of "scale" poses tremendous challenges. Even when organizations manage to overcome the many obstacles to growth, and achieve appreciable scale, this approach is seldom sufficient to achieve significant social impact on its own. This year our course will pay particular attention to network approaches which require the mobilization of a vast array of actors and resources, but have the potential to generate rapid and sustained social impact.

Course Style: A Substantive course teaches the law, theory, and policy in a particular area of law